[Interview+] Modern Day Space Enigmas. Fast Radio Bursts
Note: There's a typo for Adam's name, we fixed it in the YouTube version. Sorry about that.
Fast Radio Bursts are a great example of a modern day space mystery. We've seen a lot of them. We know a fair amount about them. But we still don't really know for sure how do they work and what's their true source. Some of them can be super weird. How exactly? Finding out in this interview.
Watch the video here (with no ads) or on YouTube: https://youtu.be/xr7okMr9WIY
Comments (8)
If you had a pulsar on a non-circular orbit around a black hole, wouldn't we be able to map out the changes in gravitational strength along it's orbit based on the variation in the pulsar's period? I'm not sure how useful that'd be, but I'm sure astronomers would be able to extract something interesting from such data.
Pulsar-black hole binaries are long sought holy grails in our world to test general relativity :D Too bad we can't seem to find any.
Hi Fraser! Have they ruled out naturally occuring nova pumped gas lasers? At least nitrogen and carbon dioxide clouds can lase superradiantly (no cavity needed). The divergence of a laser beam is linear rather than than r^2.
I don't know if you noticed but the intro slide ar1:00 say Dr, Michael Smith intead of your actual speaker.
It's too late for me to be an astronomer or astrophysicist, I missed my calling at a young age but I love it all now and really enjoy learning as much as I can about our universe and how it works. I love to see young people dedicating their lives to figuring all this out.
I am like you. Just fascinated with all the information these young ones are learning and passing on to the likes of you and me who kind of missed the bus. Thank you Fraser for another great informative interview>
Aren't all radio bursts moving at the same speed?
Yes! At the speed of light, but it can be slowed down a little by things like gravitational/plasma lensing.... well, it's making it take a longer path. The light is still going at the speed of light.